Violent crimes/knife crimes recorded in schools

Freedom of information request reference no: 242/25

REQUEST

1a) Number of violent crimes recorded in schools in each calendar year (separately) from 2014 to 2024.

1b) Number of arrests for violent crimes recorded in schools in each calendar year (separately) from 2014 to 2024.

 

2a) Number of knife crimes recorded in schools in each calendar year (separately) from 2014 to 2024.

2b) Number of arrests for knife crimes recorded in schools in each calendar year (separately) from 2014 to    2024.

 

3a) Number of knife crimes with injury recorded in schools in each calendar year (separately) from 2014 to 2024.

3b) Number of arrests for knife crimes with injury recorded in schools in each calendar year (separately) from 2014 to 2024.

 

 

Clarification: Your request has been discussed at our Analysts meeting today. More accurate data pertaining to knife crime in schools is recorded from the 1^st of April 2017. Anything prior to this would trigger a S12 fees exemption as we would have to conduct manual reviews of individual occurrences. Are you happy to receive data from April 2017?

 

That would be fine. Given that I have requested calendar years, this could start from 1 January 2018.

 

RESPONSE

 

We consulted with our Analysts who have provided the following information in relation to your request.

 

Question 1a

 

A search has been completed using our crime and incident recording system (NICHE RMS) for all ‘violence against the person ‘offences recorded between 1st January 2014 and 31^st December 2024 and have occurred on school premises.

 

Please see the table below.

 

Year	Total
2014	306
2015	479
2016	680
2017	869
2018	977
2019	1155
2020	609
2021	821
2022	1162
2023	1473
2024	1395
Grand Total	9926

 

Please be advised that without manually reviewing each and every occurrence we cannot be sure that an offence has been committed on school premises and not just reported from the school or occurred outside school grounds.

 

Question 1b

 

Year	Total Arrests
2014	116
2015	136
2016	164
2017	140
2018	116
2019	106
2020	99
2021	72
2022	93
2023	132
2024	79
Grand  Total	1253

 

Please note that this table illustrates the number of primary arrests. These are where the primary arrest offence is classed as the main offence.

Question 2a

 

A search has been completed using our crime and incident recording system (NICHE RMS) for all offences recorded between 1st January 2018 and 31^st December 2024, that fall in line with the Home Office definition of knife crime outlined in the Annual Data Requirement (ADR) 160 - offences involving knives or sharp instruments. 

 

The collection is wider than ‘knife crime’ and includes sharp instruments that are capable of piercing or cutting the skin if used as a weapon.

 

• Offences where the sharp instrument has been physically used, whether the weapon has made contact with the victim or not.
• Threats where the victim believes the threat to be genuine (in the presence of a knife). Threats over the phone/social media where there knife is not seen is not classed a knife crime.
• Offences where the sharp instrument has been used as a blunt instrument.
• Homicide involving a knife is not classed as a knife crime according to the home office and is recorded within another return.

 

For an offence to be recorded, a knife or sharp instrument must be present (or believed to be present) during the course of the offence.

 

Year	Total
2018	16
2019	11
2020	2
2021	6
2022	5
2023	6
2024	14
Grand Total	60

 

Question 2b

 

Year	Total Arrests
2018	4
2019	7
2020	9
2021	4
2022	19
2023	13
2024	7
Grand Total	63

Please be advised that some occurrences have more than one arrest linked to the occurrence and therefore, the figures in the second table may appear higher than the figures in the first table.

 

Question 3a

 

The data has been filtered to only include the ONS group ‘violence with injury’.

 

Year	Total
2018	13
2019	9
2020	1
2021	4
2022	5
2023	6
2024	9
Grand Total	47

 

Question 3b

 

Year	Total Arrests
2018	4
2019	7
2020	7
2021	4
2022	7
2023	4
2024	7
Grand  Total	40

 

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete however please note that the detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes, and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

 

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data are used.